Christmas is a time of peace on Earth, good will toward men, and Kim Dotcom. New Zealand’s 3 News reports that the Megaupload founder will make his stage debut in Auckland this week when he plays the role of “Santa Dotcom” in a satirical Christmas play called “MegaChristmas.” Dotcom, who will be joined by New Zealand Labour Party politician Jacinda Ardern and soap opera stars Kimberley Crossman and Mick Innes, apparently takes some shots at his many adversaries in the play, including New Zealand prime minister John Key. More →

Kim Dotcom may soon have his revenge. The New Zealand Herald reports that the Megaupload founder has been “cleared to pursue a case for damages against the police and the Government Communications Security Bureau in a judgment which has opened the Government’s handling of the criminal copyright case for its harshest criticism yet.” The latest ruling, handed down by New Zealand’s High Court at Auckland, comes just a little less than a year after government officials raided Dotcom’s mansion and shut down his hugely popular file-sharing website. A New Zealand judge earlier this year ruled that the Dotcom raid had been carried out illegally and said “that the police, in executing the warrants, have exceeded what they could lawfully be authorised to do.”

Everyone would love to have free high-speed Internet service, but the question always is who will actually pay for it? If you’re Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, the answer is Hollywood and the United States government. As the New Zealand Herald reports, Dotcom has plans to build out a $400 million underwater cable to the United States that would “double New Zealand’s bandwidth” and would give New Zealand ISPs free access to high-speed Internet connectivity that they could sell to their customers at just a fraction of current broadband prices. To help fund the project, the NZ Herald says Dotcom would consider “suing Hollywood studios and the US Government for their ‘unlawful and political destruction of my business.'” In addition to using lawsuits, Dotcom would also put up some money generated by his new Mega website to help foot the bill.

It’s not just the Pirate Bay that’s upping its game to thwart the copyright cops — Kim Dotcom and his Megaupload team are working on a few new tricks as well. Wired recently caught up with both Dotcom and business partner Mathias Ortmann to discuss how they’ll keep the revamped version of Megaupload, which will launch as “Mega” within the next few months, safe from government raids and copyright infringement claims. The key, according to Wired, is that all files uploaded to and shared on Mega “will first be one-click-encrypted right in a client’s browser, using the so-called Advanced Encryption Standard algorithm” after which the user is “provided with a second unique key for that file’s decryption.”

Imagine how embarrassed President Barack Obama would feel if he had to issue a formal apology to Snooki. Well, something very similar has happened in New Zealand, as the The Wall Street Journal reports that Prime Minister John Key has apologized to Megaupload founder and tabloid magnet Kim Dotcom for government security officials who illegally spied on his communications without first obtaining a warrant. The apology to Dotcom comes in the wake of a report released by New Zealand’s inspector-general of intelligence and security earlier this week that admitted the government conducted “unlawful interception of communications of certain individuals involved in the Megaupload case.” More →

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom has put out a new video teasing his new project dubbed Megabox, which is purportedly legal. The video mostly shows coders building and doing tests on the new music download site and gives a glimpse of what Megabox’s user interface will look like. No launch date was announced but the video does say that the site is “coming soon” and will give users access to their music collections “anywhere and anytime.” Dotcom earlier this month said that he was working with his lawyers to make sure that the new Megabox site had ironclad legal protection and would be free of the legal controversies that dogged its predecessor. More →